Mark Shuttleworth: "I simply have zero interest in the crowd who wants to be different. Leet. 'Linux is supposed to be hard so it's exclusive' is just the dumbest thing that a smart person could say." He's right. Lots of interesting insights in this blog post - I may not agree with everything Ubuntu does, but at least it's doing something.

I'm afraid you've missed my point. Ubuntu, whether using pieces integral to the Linux ecosystem or not, is what stands to gain or lose market share. The "Linux desktop" is a blanket term that people use to try to narrow a wide range of overlapping, conflicting, competing, and modular parts. It doesn't exist as a tangible entity.

And you're right, most users don't care about the details. They care about what they see: the UI. But using an operating system skinned with Gnome, KDE, Unity, etc. isn't going to skew the development of lower level system functionality.

It is the job of a distribution to create something cohesive out of the many projects which pertain to a given product. What you do not understand, it seems, is that Microsoft and Apple aren't all working together within their company either. They are also working on utterly unrelated parts of the system individually with a particular goal in mind.

What Ubuntu is doing is awesome, truly. With Juju and MAAS, the diverse projects targeting the cloud become irrelevant almost, you just concentrate on your particular mission. The strategy is the same in the desktop space, they are creating a great experience for utilizing the applications available. Make no mistake, for a developer, there really is no difference between Linux distributions until it comes time to compile and package their software. Only then do they have to worry about a particular systems library versions and package management. It is why you only ever see one tar.gz on a given projects site, the Linux system is quite cohesive if you know what you want to target, it is just complicated because there are many choices. Again, though, Canonical is addressing this, trying to help developers who are confused by those choices to make good decisions.

Linux is a kernel, it has never been related to desktops really. There are other components which generally target that kernel and a particular set of libraries. Unlike in the Windows world, you won't see software overwriting those libraries though, they can contribute directly to the libraries upstream. In this way everything on the system is cohesive and well defined, but to understand the whole system is complicated. This is why distributions exist, and Ubuntu does a better job than anyone else at bring that all together and delivering it in a meaningful way.

It is the job of a distribution to create something cohesive out of the many projects which pertain to a given product. What you do not understand, it seems, is that Microsoft and Apple aren't all working together within their company either. They are also working on utterly unrelated parts of the system individually with a particular goal in mind.

The particular goal you speak of is to contribute to a unified product that will be consumed by end users. These products are branded and marketed. It's because of branding and marketing that the concept of market share exists. Windows is a brand. Mac OS X is a brand. Ubuntu is a brand. Ubuntu also happens to be a Linux distribution, which means it draws heavily from an ecosystem in which the actors are not all employed by Canonical and thus not necessarily interested in its success.

Again, the point of my original post. The "Linux desktop" is an amalgam of parts created by a community invested in open source software. It is not a branded, unified, tangible entity, and as such should not be viewed through the lens of "market share".

This is why distributions exist, and Ubuntu does a better job than anyone else at bring that all together and delivering it in a meaningful way.

Canonical has built a brand. Now, to steer their brand in the direction they want they will go it alone on projects like Mir. That's all this is about. So Shuttleworth is miffed that some people within the community to which Ubuntu owes much of its infrastructure disagree with his views. Well, his interests lie with a brand that seeks to prove otherwise. Fine. But again, that's all in service of building up Ubuntu, not the "Linux desktop".